Journey to Wellness in Indian Country: greater access to U of M leadership

It took more than two years of conversations with Minnesota's eleven tribes and five University of Minnesota campuses to produce a draft update of the Board of Regents Policy: American Indian Advisory Boards for the University of Minnesota system.

And while it's still in the system (slated for discussion in September and passage in October), one of the policy's chief architects, Tadd Johnson, hopes it results in the inclusion of a representative from each of the Minnesota tribal nations on the Advisory Board.

Underlying that is a message Johnson has been hammering away at for decades: there are three kinds of sovereignty in America: federal, state and tribal.

Duluth's ongoing conversation about Earned Safe and Sick Time is a critical one for people who risk their jobs if they take time off to care for a sick child or are seeking help in instances of domestic abuse.

In Duluth's Native American community, over 30% of the population is homeless. 80% of mothers are the primary breadwinners for their families. And 46% - compared to 26% of the general population here - are living below the poverty line.

So as you might imagine, issues surrounding income and job security - not to mention aid for victims of violence - are big deals.

Sixth grade in Minnesota traditionally means a lot of learning about lakes and iron ore and Scandinavian immigrants, and usually there's a field trip to the State Capitol thrown in.

But the part of the state's history that deals with its first nations is either glossed over or skipped altogether, and in addition to leaving non-native students clueless about a large part of Minnesota's past - and a large part of our population - it makes Native students feel as though their experience has been erased.

When Melissa Boyd started her Ojibwe language studies with elders, she discovered she was learning more than words.

For one thing, her studies were teaching her things about herself as an Anishinabe person; things that weren't included in public school or even tribal school curricula.

She believes that part of low Native graduation rates have to do with missing pieces of their education: students don't learn about themselves, their issues, their community, their strengths and their history.

KUMD is licensed to the Board of Regents of the University of Minnesota